CSUSB professor wins Mensa Award for Excellence in Research

James C. Kaufman, a professor of psychology at Cal State San Bernardino, is a recipient of a 2011-2012 Mensa Award for Excellence in Research.

James C. Kaufman

Kaufman received the award for his paper, “Using Creativity to Reduce Ethnic Bias in College Admissions,” which was published in the Sept. 20, 2010, issue of Review of General Psychology.

In this paper, Kaufman argued that creativity should be included in the college admissions process, in part because such a change could balance against ethnic differences in currently used standardized tests.

“For whatever reason, there are recurrent differences across gender and ethnicity on scores on standardized ability and achievement tests,” said Kaufman. “Yet these gaps go away with creativity. Everyone has the exact same chance to be creative as anyone else.”

There are typically six awards per year given by the Mensa Education and Research Foundation and Mensa International Ltd. for papers that focus on intelligence or intellectual giftedness. The award comes with $500.

In addition to being a professor of psychology, Kaufman directs the CSUSB Learning Research Institute, where he studies which constructs lead to student success. Kaufman has been at Cal State San Bernardino since 2002; his wife Allison is an adjunct professor, also in the psychology department.

An active creative researcher, Kaufman is the author or editor of 22 books and more than 200 publications. He is the founding editor of two journals published by the American Psychological Association: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and The Arts and Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

He is also the incoming president of APA’s Division 10. He has won several awards, including the 2003 Daniel E. Berlyne Award and the 2012 Paul Farnsworth Award from APA’s Division 10, the 2008 E. Paul Torrance Award from the National Association of Gifted Children, the 2011-2012 Mensa Education & Research Foundation’s Award for Excellence in Research, and the 2009 Early Career Research Award from the Western Psychological Association.

Fo more information contact the CSUSB Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 or news.csusb.edu.